The man who's walking the Nile

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It’s late in the day when I finally spot my quarry: three camels and two men on foot, wearing the white jellabiya of Nile Arabs. The walkers turn around and I scrutinise their faces: it’s definitely him. The car skids to a halt in a cloud of dust, and I jump out shouting, “Captain Wood, I presume?” A broad smile spreads across his bearded face, and he grabs me in a hug.

“It’s good to see you,” he says, grinning. “Now, let’s find some dinner!”

I’m in Sudan, almost 100 miles north of the capital, Khartoum, at the edge of the Bayuda Desert. The authoritarian state is an unusual holiday destination, and even Sudan’s London embassy rejected my first visa application on the grounds that “no tourist would ever go to Sudan for three weeks”.

They’re probably right, as this won’t be much of a holiday. I’m here to join an old university friend, and Army officer, Levison Wood on his expedition to walk the length of the Nile, the world’s longest river – six countries and 4,250 miles from the source in Rwanda to the delta in Egypt. Here, in Sudan, we’ll be walking up to 25 miles a day.

I last saw Lev in Uganda, and he has had a tough time in the intervening two months. An American journalist who joined him to write a magazine profile died of heat exhaustion as Lev tried to resuscitate him. A few weeks later, Lev entered South Sudan in the midst of a brutal civil war, which forced him to skip the Sudd Marshes.

Levison in Uganda (Photo: Tom McShane)

“There was no way through – it’s extremely dangerous right now and militias were targeting Westerners,” he says. “It was a difficult decision but to carry on would have been reckless. One day, in more peaceful times, I will come back and fill in the gap.”

After returning to Juba, he flew to Khartoum, then drove to the South Sudanese border and continued the journey. For the next two weeks, he walked the 250 miles he had just driven. “Every day was the same – straight road, dust and truck stops. I had all that time to reflect on what had happened. It was the closest I came to giving up.”

When I join Lev, he has regained his enthusiasm and enjoying the opportunities that Sudan provides. On our first day, we crest orange sand dunes and reach the Pyramids of Meroë. These tombs of kings and queens date back more than 2,500 years but, astonishingly, we are the only people here. I feel like Indiana Jones as we explore the monuments, brushing sand from hieroglyphs and listening to ancient tales of Nubia from Lev’s guide, Moez, who joined him at the border and is walking with him the full length of Sudan.

That night we camp in the valley between two pyramid groups. The Bedouin camel-wranglers brew sweet chai and cook a dinner of beans, fried onions and tomatoes, mopped up with bread. In this empty landscape of ochre and grey, nothing interrupts our view, so the horizon looks unusually distant. The sun’s final setting lasts forever, staining the world orange, red and purple. On this moonless night, I can just make out the outline of the pyramids, their shattered tops blown off by a 19th-century Italian treasure hunter.

It’s not just history and views that surprise in Sudan. We find an unmatched generosity. As we walk, cars pull over and offer us lifts; when we rise to pay for coffee at one truck-stop, the waitress tells us that the man in the corner has already covered it. We haven’t even spoken to him, and turn to say thanks. But he’s already climbing into his truck, and doesn’t look back to seek any gratitude.

The extraordinary Pyramids of Meroë (picture: Ashwin Bhardwaj)

The logistics of this part of the world, however, are a little more awkward. In 2009, Sudan dammed the Nile at Meroë, providing hydroelectric power for the nation. It’s the most security-sensitive location in the country, so we won’t be allowed near it. The only option is to cut straight across the Bayuda Desert, walk parallel with the river, and rejoin the Nile at the town of Karima. We stop in Atbara, the next major town on the Nile, north of Meroë, to plan our logistics. As the Ethiopian tea-lady prepares coffee, two strangers insist on paying for our drinks. They are delighted that we are visiting Sudan, and tell us about a Sufi festival in the village of Kadabas. In broken English, they explain that it’s on the opposite bank of the Nile, making it the perfect departure point for the Bayuda crossing.

Forty-eight hours later we are in the courtyard of Kadabas mosque. More than 10,000 Sufis from across Sudan are here, engaged in Dhikr – a devotional act that involves singing short phrases from the Koran, accompanied by drums. It is an intoxicating, joyous experience, with the crowd chanting and swaying in rhythm (see video below).

“The production team back home have done some research,” says Lev (the expedition will also be the subject of a Channel 4 documentary). “They’ve found nothing about Kadabas or the festival – we’re possibly the first outsiders ever to have documented it. It’s remarkable, really, that a chance meeting in a café led to us being here. Encounters like that make this whole journey worthwhile.”

But we can’t linger for long, and the next day we load the camels with sacks and jerry cans. After travelling north along the Nile’s west bank for two days, we will strike our across the desert. The crossing itself will take eight days, and there’s no guarantee we’ll find anything out there. We take plenty of rations and enough water for five days. We have Russian maps that show the location of wells, and Awad, the senior camel-hand, assures us that he knows the way. In total, six of us will cross the Bayuda: Lev, Moez and I; Awad and Ahamad, the two Bedouin camel-wranglers whom Lev had found in Khartoum; and Dr Will Charlton, another friend of Lev’s and mine from university, who used some unexpected leave from the Army to join us in the desert.

Each day follows the same routine. Waking before dawn, we have a breakfast of tea, biscuits and an orange. We drink two litres of water, with Dioralyte to keep our salts up, and start walking at half past six. It’s already 28C (82F). We stop at half nine for a snack, and by noon it’s too hot to continue. We squeeze into the shadow of a tarpaulin for a lunch of biltong, army rations and M&Ms.

An illustration of the route

The temperature builds: by now it’s 42C (107F) in the shade. At about 1pm, a strong wind gets up, blowing sand everywhere and whipping the tarpaulin until it rips. At 2pm, the temperature peaks at 49C (120F) and a rainbow halo appears mockingly around the sun, formed by dust in the air, rather than moisture.

The slightest movement is an exhaustive effort and skin touching the ground becomes damp with sweat, making me realise how much water I’m evaporating (we consume eight litres of water a day). At 3pm, the wind becomes a pleasant breeze, and it’s cool enough to start moving again. We walk until 7pm, our pace and enthusiasm increasing as it cools. Dinner is another ration pack, and we lie down to sleep by 9.30pm.

Ashwin (right) with Levison

The desert is a menacing reminder of life’s fragility, but it’s also an encounter with the truly sublime: fear, respect and beauty coalesce, forming a strangely satisfying feeling of humility. Initially, such vast desolation is terrifying, but by the fourth day, that changes. My daily admin and routine have become second nature and I’m able to contribute to group efforts and tasks. While walking, I’ve stopped thinking about the heat or need to rest, and instead I enter a trance-like state. Questions and anxieties about work and life, which I’ve been turning over in my mind for weeks or months, pop into my conscience and become simple and clear.

Watch Ashwin talk about his last, gruelling day walking through the desert

Lev agrees. “I’ve never been a fatalist, but I’ve learnt patience on this expedition. Parts of the trip have felt like a prison sentence, but once I accepted my predicament, it stopped bothering me. It sounds a bit 'gap yah’, but that’s something you don’t learn in London: if you don’t like pizza, you can have sushi; if you don’t like a job, you can quit. Here I don’t have any choice about the food I eat, the place I’m staying, or where I’m going. It’s liberating not having to make hundreds of small, and fundamentally meaningless, decisions every day.”

On my final evening with Lev, we are back by the Nile. He heads down to wash on its banks, a reminder of the constant thread in his journey. An old farmer appears, bringing fodder for the camels and tea for us. He refuses to take any money. He asks us to stay in his house, and if he can slaughter a sheep so that we can have a feast. We politely decline as we realise there’s only one sheep in the village.

The farmer wanders into the darkness and 10 minutes later returns with string beds that he has dragged across 200 yards of sand: if we won’t sleep in his house, he insists that we have his beds.

It’s a humbling example of generosity to strangers. My time in Sudan has shattered my expectations, and been much more rewarding than I could have imagined. If the Sudanese government wants to improve its international relations, all they need to do is stop denying visas.

Lev has another two months of life-changing encounters ahead. On the morning I leave him, he finds out about a church dating back to the fourth century, and is off on a diversion to explore the ruins. Another chance meeting had led to another remarkable discovery.

Essentials

Ashwin Bhardwaj flew to Sudan with Egypt Air (0844 822 1110; egyptair.com). Return flights from Heathrow to Khartoum via Cairo start at £472. Secret Compass (020 3239 8038; secretcompass.com) can arrange bespoke tours to the Bayuda Desert, mentioned above. It also offers the chance to join expeditions in locations ranging from Siberia, Afghanistan and Sierra Leone to Panama and Madagascar. For the latest on Levison Wood’s expedition, including video clips and his current location, see walkingthenile.com

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